The Parable of the Rich Fool found in Luke 12:13-21 is a key passage when it comes to understanding God’s design for wealth. So what is the message Jesus is intending to convey in this parable? I’ll give you three:
- Don’t mistake your time in this life for eternity.
In Luke 12:19-20, the Rich Fool says to himself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry,” and in response, God replies “You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?” Unfortunately, many of us have made this exact same mistake when we tell ourselves that “life will be good when ‘this’ happens.” Often, we attribute ‘this’ to that dream job, that dream house, that dream car, etc. However, we are reminded in Scripture that tomorrow isn’t guaranteed (Proverbs 27:1), so making the mistake of defining our lives by tomorrow rather than today is a key thing to remember in this story. Life isn’t defined by tomorrow; it’s defined by today.
This doesn’t mean we don’t save for retirement (Proverbs 21:20, Proverbs 6:6-8) or prepare for the future (Genesis 41, Exodus 16), because both concepts are also backed up with Scripture. Rather, our lives and significance are not driven by these growing and unending desires for more.
- Don’t mistake your body for your soul.
How do we know the Rich Fool did this in the story? Well, if we look at the story, he addresses himself as “soul” but defines his life by his “body.” As previously noted in verse 19, he encourages himself to eat, drink, and be merry since he has many years of goods laid up. However, he makes this mistake of defining life by physicality and its pleasures. Sadly, his perspective falls short of defining life correctly, since life itself would then have to be defined by physical things rather than what God says. For instance, you could lose your health, your wealth, even your capacity to do things because of paralysis or disease, but even without all those things, God’s definition of life exists outside of all that. This Rich Fool’s definition unfortunately does not, according to verse 19.
He mistook his body for his soul because life is defined by a soul’s relationship with God (Luke 12:21), not by what you accumulate (Luke 12:15). It’s the same mistake we often make in our lives when we miss the forest for the trees.
- Don’t mistake what is yours for what is God’s.
If you read the parable in full, you notice that it’s told in response to a brother asking for Jesus to mediate and judge a situation where he feels entitled to a division of his father’s estate. Firstly, there is already a mistake on the brother’s end because according to the Law, the firstborn had every right to that share on his own. Secondly, to want something other than the Law of God is to want life in a way that is defined differently than God defined it in the parable.
Of course, Jesus doesn’t play around in the weeds but gets right down to the heart of the matter: covetousness. He even goes as far as to say that “life is not measured by how much you own” (Luke 12:15). You notice near the end of the parable that this story takes us full circle, because the parable began with the brother asking for a division in the inheritance, and where does the story end up? The Rich Fool dies.
So, what happens to his stuff? Jesus goes on to say, “Then who will get everything you worked for?” (Luke 12:20). Well, the answer to this question is simple: whoever he leaves it to. Another question we find ourselves asking is, “What are they going to do with it?” Like most people, they are probably going to fight over it, just like the brothers were already doing at the beginning of this passage.
This parable lines up with the wisdom found in the book of Ecclesiastes, where it talks about the cycle of life: you are born, you earn, and you leave your stuff to fools (Ecclesiastes 2:18). In most cases, the wealth you worked so hard for gets left to others who didn’t earn it and therefore don’t appreciate it. The parable also reveals that if money is our master, God is not (Matthew 6:24).
What we learn ultimately in this third point is that the Rich Fool mistook what was God’s and told himself that he earned it and that it belonged to him. Of course, God tells him, “Tonight, your soul (life) will be required” (verse 20), which in other words means that your body and soul will be separated and everything that you accumulated on earth with your body is also separated from you forever.
The Parable of the Rich Fool reminds us what a life of true wisdom is. It’s not in the abundance of wealth, but in the richness of a relationship with God. To be rich toward oneself and poor toward God is a terrible ending. Jesus invites us to flip our current understanding of our world’s values to interpret the world the way that He wants us to see it. Everything that the Rich Fool was obsessed with ended up being meaningless. Sometimes we focus so heavily on investing in the things of this earth that we forget God promised to give us a kingdom.
I once heard it said this way: “The king and the pawn go back in the box at the end of the game. When life is over, everybody goes back in the box. It doesn’t matter whether you are a king or a pawn, you go back in the box.” I think this metaphor applies heavily to the context and meaning of this parable. At the end of the day, we leave this life the same way: empty-handed.
This story is by no means intended to encourage people to be reckless with their money, but rather the opposite. We need to learn to manage our money like God would want us to since it belongs to Him (Deuteronomy 8:18, Hebrews 2:10-18). We need to define life correctly and to have money in its proper place in our lives (1 Timothy 6:10, Ecclesiastes 5:10). Lastly, we need to live our lives as if this isn’t all there is, because this life is merely a blip in the grand scheme of eternity.
As soon as we find our source of security, identity, and joy within our possessions, we make the very same mistakes as the Rich Fool. We are blessed by God to abound in every good work (2 Corinthians 9:8) so that we can be a blessing in the lives of others (Ephesians 4:28).